As anti-shared space campaigners celebrate their achievement in helping secure a national inquiry into public accessibility, we take a look at some of the top transport protests of history and how they have helped shape the world.
1. No justice, no fare
Perhaps the most seminal moment of the American civil rights movement, the 1955—1956, Montgomery Bus protest is the most famous and inspirational of all transport protests.
Martin Luther King Jnr, making the heavens fall
Even now it is hard not to shed a tear at the thought of the solemn dignity of Rosa Parks, the woman who refused to move to back of the bus.
Her arrest sparked a 13-month mass bus boycott that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional.
The protest enjoyed massive support from the local black community, who would rather ‘walk in dignity than ride in humiliation’. Carpools were also organised and when the city pressured local insurance companies to stop insuring cars used in them, the boycott leaders arranged policies with Lloyd's of London - a company that once insured slave cargo ships.
The protest was co-ordinated by the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which elected Martin Luther King Jnr. as its president.
Dr King was new to Montgomery and the civil rights movement but his soaring rhetoric brought international attention to the movement, and together with the MIA’s tactics of mass non-violent protest, a model was set for challenging segregation in the South.
At one meeting of the MIA, Dr King said: ‘I want it to be known that we’re going to work with grim and bold determination to gain justice on the buses in this city. And we are not wrong…If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong.’
That sound you can hear is the heavens falling.
2 The past is not even past
Lloyds are not the only UK interest to have profited from slavery. Bristol’s involvement in the slave trade peaked between 1730 and 1745, with the city becoming the country’s leading slaving port, bringing tremendous wealth and a legacy of shame that many in the city still feel keenly.
Despite Bristol now having a reputation for multicultural liberalism, in the early 1960s it still had racist employment policies on some of its buses, prompting the 1963 bus boycott, which forced the Bristol Omnibus Company to change its unofficial ‘colour bar’.
The Bristol action followed Jamaican-born Guy Bailey being turned down at a job interview for the company straight away because of the colour of his skin. At the time, the manager who dismissed him was acting within his rights.
On 28 August 1963, the same day that Martin Luther King delivered his ‘I have a dream speech’ in Washington DC, the Bristol bus company changed its policy to one of ‘complete integration’. Many believe this paved the way to the 1965 Race Relations act, banning all discrimination in the workplace.
3 Trees or tarmac
Margaret Thatcher’s government wanted to launch ‘the biggest road programme since the Romans’ under its Roads for Prosperity plans, however come the Major government of the 1990s, the Tory party didn’t count on its own version of the barbarians, epitomised by Swampy.
Daniel Hooper rose to tabloid prominence after spending a week in a series of tunnels dug in the path of a new extension to the A30 road in Fairmile, Devon, and resisting attempts at eviction by police.
Bizarrely, when he was finally evicted the magistrate passing sentence on him was David Cameron's mother. We are not sure if she gave him any sartorial advice as she apparently would do for Jeremy Corbyn.
Swampy was also involved somewhat in the major protest of the Newbury bypass in Berkshire, where protestors took to the trees. That protest might not have been successful but the troubled road building programme ground to a halt following these widespread and determined campaigns, which influenced at least a generation of policy makers to stay away from major road building programmes.
While Highways England is planning to build again, its emphasis on making the most of existing capacity owes something to Swampy, as it does more mundane practicalities like cost.
Senior figures from both sides of the battle are still very much involved in transport. Jason Torrance, now policy director at Sustrans, was one of the founders and co-ordinators of the campaign, while central to the road building side was Steve Rowsell, president of the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation for 2016/17.
If you drive along the Newbury bypass now, at the site of the protest you will see Middle Oak the only surviving member of 10,000 mature trees in the path of the road.
According to Mr Rowsell, it is a little-known fact that a certain senior Druid actually cursed him by linking his fate inextricably to that tree. ‘If that tree goes so do I’, Mr Rowsell told the CIHT when he accepted the presidency.
‘I sometimes drive by just to check on it,’ he added, perhaps only half joking.
4 Battlefield Thames
Brexit’s famous Battle of the Thames will probably not live long in the collective memory, but the row between Nigel Farage and Bob ‘I am not a Midlands authority’ Geldof seemed to sum up everything that was bizarre, contradictory and down right ridiculous about the EU referendum.
On the one hand Mr Farage was leading a flotilla of fisherman up the Thames to raise awareness of EU regulation of fishing rights in British waters. Of course to the uninformed observer this might have seemed a harmless publicity stunt, however to those with more history perhaps it was clear trouble was ahead. Did we learn nothing from the Cod Wars?
Farage’s flotilla came under heavy publicity fire as it reached parliament, from a boat captained by the Band Aid champion Mr Geldof, who claimed Farage was ‘no Fisherman’s friend’.
The sight of these two privileged men literally fighting over the price of fish was perhaps the most ridiculous moment of a ridiculous campaign, which also included a former education secretary saying that Britain had ‘had enough of experts’.
5. Suffrage the little horses
Horses were still a common form of transportation when Emily Wilding Davison staged the most famous of all the Suffragette's protests, which tragically resulted in her death when she was went under the hooves of the king's horse at Epsom Racecourse in 1913.
New analysis suggests she was not attempting to commit suicide that day but simply interrupt the race and she was not the only casualty from that day.
The jockey who had ridden the horse, Herbert Jones, suffered a mild concussion but afterwards claimed he was 'haunted by that poor woman's face'. In 1951 he killed himself.
The horse Anmer however made a full recovery.
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